Danial Bagheri

The picture of Dorian Gray, By Oscar Wilde. Pages 24, 25, 26.

After a few moments he said to him, " Have you really a very bad influence, Lord Henry? As bad as Basil says?
" " There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral. Immoral from the scientific
point of view." " Why? " " Because to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul. He does not think his
natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such
things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else's music, an actor of a part that has not been
written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly that is what each of us is
here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that
one owes to one's self. Of course, they are charitable. They feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar. But their
own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of
society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion these are the two things
that govern us. And yet " " Just turn your head a little more to the right, Dorian, like a good boy," said the
painter, deep in his work, and conscious only that a look had come into the lad's face that he had never seen
there before. " And yet," continued Lord Henry, in his low, musical voice, and with that graceful wave of the
hand that was always so characteristic of him, and that he had even in his Eton days, " I believe that if one man
were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought,
reality to every dream I believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all
the maladies of medievalism, and return to the Hellenic ideal to something finer, richer, than the Hellenic ideal,
it may be. But the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself. The mutilation of the savage has its tragic
survival in the self-denial that mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to
strangle broods in the mind, and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode
of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret. The only way
to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has
forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said
that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins
of the world take place also. You, Mr. Gray, you yourself, with your rose-red youth and your rose-white
boyhood, you have had passions that have made you afraid, thoughts that have filled you with terror, day-
dreams and sleeping dreams whose mere memory might stain your cheek with shame ".
Immoral: (adj.), (Of people and their behavior) not considered to be good or honest by most people.
Burn:(v.), (Literary) to feel or show a very strong emotion or desire.
Race:(n.), a group of people who share the same language, history, culture, etc.
Terror:(n.), a feeling of extreme fear.
Lad:(n.), a boy or young man.
Graceful:(adj.), moving in an attractive way that shows control; having a smooth, attractive form.
Eton:(n.), an English public school for boys near Windsor in Berkshire, started in 1440 by King Henry VI. Its
students are mainly from rich families.
Impulse:(n.), a sudden strong wish or need to do something, without stopping to think about the results.
Malady:(n.), a serious problem.
Medievalism:(n.), devotion to the institutions, arts, and practices of the Middle Ages.
Hellenic:(adj.), of or connected with ancient or modern Greece.
Mutilation:(n.), severe damage to something; the act of causing severe damage to something.
Mar:(v.), to damage something or make something less good or successful.
Strive:(v.), to try very hard to achieve something.
Strangle:(v.), to prevent something from growing or developing.
Brood:(v.), to think a lot about something that makes you annoyed, anxious or upset.
Mode:(n.), a particular way of doing something; a particular type of something.
Purification:(n.), a process or act of making somebody pure by removing evil from their souls.
Recollection:(n.), a thing that you remember from the past.
Yield:(v.), to stop resisting something/somebody; to agree to do something that you do not want to do.
Long:(v.), to want something very much especially if it does not seem likely to happen soon.
Mere:(adj.), used when you are saying that the fact that a particular thing is present in a situation is enough to
have an influence on that situation.
Stain:(v.), to leave a mark that is difficult to remove on something; to be marked in this way.